TheatreReviewRiverside Studios, LondonFew things in British life are more comical than the tabloid press suffering one of its periodic fits of morality. But although this show from the Catalan troupe La Fura Dels Baus has caused hysteria in some quarters for its smashing of sexual taboos, I was offended by something else: its mindless parroting of so many '60s clichés.
What it offers is an update of the Marquis de Sade's 1795 work, Philosophy of the Bedroom, in which an ingénue is sexually initiated by a gang of libertines.
In this none too elegant variation, we see an 18-year-old drama student inducted by a group of porn actors in the mysteries of their craft. Lesbian caresses are followed by oral instruction as well as vaginal and anal penetration, until the hapless Eugenie succumbs to every form of sensory delight.
Eventually we too are invited to participate with a palpable "plant" pulled out of the audience to be mildly fellated by a heroine who clearly warms to her task. Only the most naive theatre-goer will assume any of this is for real: the stage is filled with prosthetic penises, forming a startling contrast to the actors' own dangling appendages.
What the show, directed by Alex Olle, is actually offering is pastiche porn to release us from our presumed inhibitions and to ram home Sade's point that sexual pleasure pursued to its limits is spiritually liberating.
We are constantly being lectured, through the surtitles, on the hypocrisies of society, and the fact that "a better world is possible". My objection to all this lies in its reduction of sex to a purely mechanical act and its unquestioning acceptance of Sade's dubious philosophy.
As Roger Shattuck pointed out in Forbidden Knowledge, "the sangfroid Sade advocates consists in the systematic elimination of all feeling for other people in favour of infantile egoistic pleasure".
But this show never questions Sade's degradation of women or his belief that killing is justified if it causes genital arousal. Instead of the genuine dialectic of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, we simply get a hippie hymn to hedonism.
The show's saving grace lies in its occasional flashes of self-mocking humour and its technical expertise: one passage in which the cast indulge in aerial sex is rather good, and, throughout, the simulated coupling on stage is matched by more graphic visual footage.
But, far from shocking us into a new awareness, the climactic image of Eugenie's mother being gang-banged simply exposes the sterility of Sade's philosophy.
And the only passage of real eroticism comes when the cast put their clothes back on, and for a brief moment become quite sexy.
· Until May 17. Box office: 020-8237 1111.
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